The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

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Friday, July 25, 2014

The Israeli ambassador in Berlin, Yakov Hadas-Handelsman, this week
used three words and that fatal number to describe the situation: "It’s
like 1938." Because the Jews are attacked once again in the streets of
Germany.

Paraphrased slogans that date back to the days of Hitler,
such as "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas", are heard during
pro-Palestinian manifestations throughout all of Europe. And since
Israel launched Operation Zuk Eitan - Protective Edge - the European
Jews are falling back into a state of inferiority and fear.

Once
again it is dangerous to be a Jew in Europe. The imam of a mosque in
Berlin is under investigation for this sermon: “Oh Allah, destroy the
Zionist Jews, count them and kill them to the last one”.

In Paris
protesters are urged to adhere to “a raid in the Jewish Quarter”. It
seems that the days of Klaus Barbie are come back in Paris.

Hundreds
of French young people marched toward a synagogue shouting "Mort aux
juifs," as happened in the days of Captain Dreyfus. In large urban areas
such as Sarcelles, Créteil, Sartrouville and Saint-Denis, the tension
is high. In the Marais, the historic Jewish district of the French
capital, Jewish students are attacked if they are wearing tzitzit or
kippahs. Meanwhile in the town of Roubaix, the home of the perpetrator
of the massacre at the Jewish Museum in Brussels has become a pilgrimage
site for Islamists.

There is no shortage of slogans like "Merah max", which praise the terrorist who killed Jewish students at a school in Tolouse.

Anti-Semitism
is an old "maladie française", a French sickness. But now, it is worse
than ever. Ten years ago, a million French people took to the streets
against the wave of anti-Semitism crying "Synagogues brûlées, en
République ranger”. Today the same streets are full of hatred for the
Jews. And synagogues have been targeted.

In Amsterdam, the city of
Baruch Spinoza, the home of the Dutch Chief Rabbi Benjamin Jacobs, has
just been attacked twice in one week.

Even in the Washington Post,
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been portrayed beating a
Palestinian child in a cartoon. And the degeneration of journalism is
rampant everywhere, from the Independent to Le Monde, newspapers where Jews are often depicted with a big nose (the Jew "Satan scarlet hawk-nosed" as Joseph Goebbels said).

Opinion
makers and renowned directors of the humanitarian NGOs are comparing
Gaza to Guernica and the security barrier to the Warsaw ghetto.

The CNN journalist in Israel, Diana Magnay, has been forced to resign after having defined the Israelis as "scum".

A
war is waged against Israel in the best universities. Freedom of speech
is granted to everyone in European universities, including the
Islamists, but not to the Israelis, who are intimidated, isolated,
execrated, often hunted. Recently, to name just one example, one of the
most important US academic associations, the American Studies
Association, voted for a boycott of Israeli universities and colleges.

In
the parliamentary debates of Europe, Jews are called “avengers” and
charged with the world’s ills, while Islamic leaders enjoy the
hypocrisy. From Turkish premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who compared
Netanyahu to Hitler, to the former Malaysian mufti, Mohd Asri Zainul
Abidin, who evoked the Austrian painter to explain that perhaps "he was
right to exterminate the Jews" .

A number of Nobel Prize winners (Desmond Tu-tu, Betty Williams, Federico Mayor Zara-goza,
Jody Williams, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Mairead Maguire and Rigoberta
Men-chu) just called for a boycott of Israel, compared Israel to Apartheid in South Africa.

The Jewish State in the West has become an
"appendix," a foreign entity, colonial, something to be removed. Europe
seems to want to solve, once and for all, the "péché originel of
Israel." The original sin of the creation of Israel.

The
isolation of Israel is also economic, especially in northern Europe.
The largest Danish bank, Danske Bank, has put the Israeli Hapoalim in
its black list. Then came the decision of the Swedish bank Nordea to put
under scrutiny the Israeli Leumi and Tefahot for their presence in
Judea and Samaria. The largest Dutch pension fund, PGGM, withdrew five investments with financial institutions in Jerusalem. Even Abp, the third most important pension fund in the world, withdrew from the Israeli market.

Asher
Ben-Natan, the Israeli ambassador to Germany in the ‘60s, attended a
conference at the University of Munich. He was violently interrupted by
activists of Israel’s boycott. A poster hanging in the auditorium read:
"Only when the bombs explode in fifty Israeli supermarkets can be
peace." Forty years have passed since then, the boycott has become
mainstream and missiles are falling on the territory of Israel.

Since
then, as the Dutch journalist Paul Andersson Toussaint has written,
"anti-Semitism is again salonfähig." It is a German word used seventy
years ago. It means acceptable in polite society.

An acid rain is
falling on our heads. The sky is sick over Europe. Meanwhile, over Tel
Aviv, the sky has been closed. It is the first time in three decades.

UNRWA's claims that an evacuation of a Gaza school was prevented are untrue, says the IDF.

UNRWA HQ in Gaza

Flash 90

Israel on Thursday called out a United Nations aid agency for falsely claiming
that the Israeli Defense Forces did not permit civilians to evacuate a
Gaza school where 15 people were killed in an Israeli attack, reports
the Washington Free Beacon.

The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) laid blame for the civilian
deaths on the IDF, claiming it never received approval from the IDF for
an evacuation from the facility.

UNRWA released a statement claiming, “UNRWA had been attempting to
negotiate with the [IDF] a pause in the fighting during which they would
guarantee a safe corridor to relocate staff and any displaced persons
who chose to evacuate to a more secure location. Approval for that never came to UNRWA.”

“Over the course of the day UNRWA tried 2 coodinate [sic] with the
Israeli Army a window for civilians 2 leave & it was never granted,”
UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness tweeted, following the strike.

Multiple IDF sources rejected UNRWA’s claims and characterized them as outright falsehoods when reached by the Washington Free Beacon.

“For two days we were trying to move people out of that school in
particular and the Beit Hanoun area in general,” said an IDF official
who was involved in the interactions between the IDF, UNRWA, and International Red Cross (ICRC) leading up to the incident.

The official continued, “This morning we sought a ceasefire in the
area and a humanitarian evacuation of civilians, but Hamas
refused—because they wanted to keep civilians in the area to protect
their fighters who were firing on the IDF.”

The claim by Gunness and UNRWA that the IDF did not respond to their
request to evacuate civilians, the source said, is “a flat-out complete
and total lie,” the official told the Free Beacon.

When asked for further details about the incident, UNRWA claimed that
its school in Beit Hanoun had been turned into “a battlefield” in
recent days.

Many locals, including women and children, had sought shelter from
the fighting in the school, believing it to be safe territory, according
to UNRWA.

“This is the fourth time in the past four days that an UNRWA school has been struck by explosive projectiles,” UNRWA said.

An official IDF statement released to the Free Beacon said
that “the IDF authorized a humanitarian time window for evacuation
between 10:00-14:00 IDT earlier today. Hamas prevented the civilians
from leaving it and once again used their infrastructure and international symbols as human
shields. In the course of the afternoon, several rockets launched by
Hamas from within the Gaza Strip landed in the Beit Hanoun area.”

“From initial inquiries done about the incident, during the intense
fighting in the area, militants opened fire at IDF soldiers from the
school area,” the statement said.

“In order to eliminate the threat posed to their lives, they responded with fire toward the origins of the shooting,” it added.

“The UNRWA claims that Israel prevented the safe evacuation of the
school in Beit Hanoun are unfounded,” the statement concluded.

The IDF said earlier Thursday it was investigating claims that the school was shelled.

UNRWA has made headlines in recent days after it was discovered that Hamas stored rockets in its schools in Gaza.

UNRWA found the rockets in one of its vacant schools a week ago. It found a second batch in
a vacant school on Tuesday, but said in a statement that because staff
were withdrawn quickly, they were "unable to confirm the precise
number."

In both cases UNRWA said it "informed the relevant parties," but did not identify who had been contacted.

While UNRWA confirmed the existence of rockets in
one of its schools last week, the organization refused an Israeli
request to provide a picture of the weapons. A picture could have helped
Israel show that Hamas uses civilian institutions to store weapons and
launch attacks.

On Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed alarm over the finding of the rockets and directed the world body to deploy experts to deal with the situationElad BenariSource: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/183331#.U9HdR2MYjLM Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Seeming
to give credence to Orwell’s observation that “Everyone believes in the
atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side,
without ever bothering to examine the evidence,” the world’s attention
has turned once again to the clash between Hamas and Israel, as the
Jewish state launches its ground incursion into Gaza in what is being
called Operation Protective Edge. And predictably, as the body count
rises on the Palestinian side, the moral arbiters of acceptable
political behavior have begun condemning the Jewish state for its
perceived abuses in executing its national self-defense.

Forgetting that Israel’s current campaign was necessitated by
ceaseless rocket and mortar assaults on its southern towns from
Hamas-controlled Gaza, international leaders and diplomats have
initiated their moral hectoring of Israel as it attempts to shield its
citizens from harm. Britain’s deputy Prime Minister, Nicolas Clegg, was adamant
that Israel cease its self-defense. “I really would now call on the
Israeli government to stop,” he said. “They have proved their point,”
and had done so, in his opinion, through a deliberately
“disproportionate form of collective punishment.”

UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, who presides over a morally
bankrupt group comprised largely of despotic, authoritarian regimes, was quick to decide
that “Too many” Palestinian civilians have been killed, and that he
“feels a sense of responsibility for the Palestinians who, especially in
the Gaza Strip, have long been denied the sense of freedom and dignity
that they deserve,” presumably overlooking those same human rights being
denied to Israelis who have lived under a rain of rockets since 2005.

But the most insidious refrain, one uttered only when Israel’s
enemies are killed (certainly not when Jews are murdered), is that
Israel’s military response is too aggressive, that the force and effect
of the excursion into Gaza are beyond what is permitted under human
rights law and the rules of war. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas,
for instance, brushed aside any talk of justifiable self-defense,
asserting that “. . . Israel is not defending itself, it is defending
settlements, its main project.” Moreover, the deaths so far of some 200
Palestinians in the latest incursion is, according to Mr. Abbas,
tantamount to “. . . genocide—the killing of entire families is genocide
by Israel against our Palestinian people,” indicating both an ignorance
of what that term actually signifies and a blindness to actual
genocides occurring presently at the hand of his co-religionists
elsewhere in the world.

The UN’s Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, James Rawley, had thoughts
only for the Palestinian victims of the conflict, sanctimoniously
announcing that the Israeli response must be “proportionate” to the
threats posed by Hamas attacks, and that “Our thoughts must first be
with those many [Palestinian] civilians who have already lost their
lives, and the even greater number of who have suffered physical or
psychological injuries.”

The remonstrations of its many and far-flung critics aside, Israel is
not the international outlaw here, but a victim now involved in a
defensive countermeasure to terrorism against its citizenry. In fact, in
a 2008 report,
Justus Reid Weiner and Dr. Avi Bell, two legal scholars at the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, noted that Hamas’s shelling of
civilian targets within Israel’s borders—the direct cause of the current
conflict—clearly violates international law and requires a military
response from Israel, even though world observers have been oddly silent
on the Palestinian incitement that is the cause of the present clashes.

“The Palestinian attacks,” they wrote, “violate one of the most basic
rules of international humanitarian law, the rule of distinction, which
requires combatants to aim all their attacks at legitimate targets –
enemy combatants or objects that contribute to enemy military actions.
Violations of the rule of distinction – attacks deliberately aimed at
civilians or protected objects as such – are war crimes,” exactly what
Hamas has been committing with its relentless rocket assaults. Hamas
militants not only commit a war crime each time they lob a rocket or
mortar into Israel from Gaza by virtue of the fact that the targets of
those attacks are specifically and purposely civilian, not military,
assets—a violation of the “distinction” rule—but also, in not wearing
military uniforms and often posing as civilians, Hamas terrorists are
also committing another crime, that of perfidy.

Article 48 of Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions of 1949
is very clear about this prohibited behavior of combatants, stating
that “[i]n order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian
population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at
all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and
between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall
direct their operations only against military objectives.” Since the
rockets Hamas aims at southern Israeli towns are launched randomly into
civilian enclaves, and lack the technical sophistication to reliably be
aimed at military targets even if that was Hamas’s actual intention,
each of the 12,000 or so rockets that have come into Israel from Gaza
since 2005 (including over 1000 this month alone) represents both an causis belli and a war crime.

“It is a central principle of just war theory,” observed
Dr. Michael Walzer, Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Advanced
Study, “that the self-defense of a people or a country cannot be made
morally impossible.”

Israel faces that precise dilemma every time it is
forced to suppress Palestinian aggression and protect its populace from
unending rocket assaults, particularly since its actions are widely and
almost immediately denounced as excessive, disproportionate, and in
violation of international law. Perceived as having unjustly
dispossessed the Palestinians and accused of still occupying both the
West Bank but also Gaza (and holding the latter under siege), and
collectively punishing the Palestinian Arabs living there, Israel has
been stripped of its moral standing in the community of nations and so
its attempts at self-defense are at best tolerated.

Rather than serving as a deterrent against attacks of terrorists,
Israel’s military strength and capabilities are instead looked at as an
unfair advantage in the asymmetrical war in which it finds itself. Few
leaders in the West and none in the Arab world ever condemn Hamas for
its chronic, unlawful terroristic behavior toward Israel, but the moment
Israel undertakes military action it receives strict warnings for
restraint, censure for its success in neutralizing Hamas strongholds,
and eventual condemnation for the inevitable deaths of civilians—the
collateral damage that is the tragic byproduct of conflicts fought in
neighborhoods rather than battlefields.

Israel, which is promiscuously condemned for committing “crimes
against humanity” and human rights violations, not only waited years
before responding to Palestinian terrorism, but then, in one of the most
populous areas on earth, scrupulously followed the rule of distinction
by precisely targeting Hamas terrorists and infrastructure, with
minimal, though still unfortunate, collateral damage to the Gaza
civilian population – a feat made all the more difficult by Hamas’s
insidious tactic of embedding rocket launchers and armament stores
within homes, apartment buildings, schools, and mosques in residential
neighborhoods.

Combat in the crowded streets and alleys of Gaza obviously makes
warfare more difficult for Israel, especially in its attempt to minimize
civilian casualties while maximizing the suppression of enemy fire and
attempting to neutralize Hamas’s ability to continue to pose a threat in
the future. Since, as mentioned, Hamas militants do not wear
identifying uniforms, and embed themselves within civilian environments,
Israel’s effort to maintain “distinction”— that is, scrupulously
determining who is a legitimate military target and who is a civilian—
is normally challenging and dangerous. And, knowing that the world
community is apt to be harsh about any civilian deaths that result from
Israel’s offensive—even though it Hamas who has created the
circumstances by which those civilians will and have perished—Israel has
resorted to extraordinary measures to avoid the death of
non-combatants, including “knocking” on roofs to warm of imminent
bombardment, distributing flyers, and using other warning techniques,
all of which compromise Israel’s strategic advantage while helping to
minimize civilian deaths. Even so, when the inevitable Palestinian
civilian deaths occur (which seem to be a welcomed part of Hamas’s
cognitive war against Israel), Israel is accused of violating the rule
of “proportionality,” the other aspect of warfare which international
law requires that prohibits a military response that causes more
civilian deaths than would be considered necessary in achieving a set
military objective.

In fact, collateral damage – the accidental killing of civilians
during military conflicts – is itself allowed by international law,
provided the actions that caused the civilian deaths are not, according
to Weiner and Bell, excessive in relation to the military need. But the
fact that deaths occur in civilian populations – even what might be
perceived as excessive deaths – are not in and of themselves indicative
of violations of international law, and, says Weiner and Bell, “if a
state, like Israel, is facing aggression, then proportionality addresses
whether force was specifically used by Israel to bring an end to the
armed attack against it.”

The practice of Hamas of using human shields, as well as storing
munitions and weaponry in civilian neighborhoods and non-military
buildings, also absolves Israel from some of the proportionality
requirements, since the use of human shields and the perfidy of Hamas in
the first place puts the fault for civilian deaths on it, rather than
Israel. Israel indiscriminately pummeling Gaza with bombardment from the
air—with many resulting civilian deaths—would violate the rule of
proportionality and could be considered a war crime; Israel responding
to rocket fire from an apartment building and, in the process, killing
civilians (even a large number of them) who were in the building with
Hamas combatants is allowed, as long as Israel’s intent was to achieve a
military objective and not just to exact revenge or capriciously murder
civilians. Even errors which lead to the death of civilians are
acceptable, as long as the military purpose was the motivating factor in
the assault, since, as Jonathan F. Keiler, former captain in the Army’s Judge-Advocate General Corps, noted,“we do not determine criminality based on outcome, but intent.”

Proportionality also does not require that the number of
deaths—either of Hamas militants or Palestinian civilians—be equal to
the number of deaths suffered by Israel, or to damage done to Israeli
infrastructure or military targets. One moral challenge in asymmetrical
war is that observers in the world community intuitively feel that
Israel’s disproportionate military strength makes the conflict
fundamentally “unfair,” that because it is technologically and
logistically able to exact more harm on the Palestinians, Israel should
restrain itself to minimize enemy casualties. That may be a compelling
emotional response, but it is, of course, not a legal or moral argument
with any weight. In fact, it is precisely because of Israel’s military
superiority that a rational adversary would have been deterred from
attacking in the first place.

The fact that Hamas chose to challenge an adversary with
disproportionate military capability indicates that the decision was
either irrational or some type of collective death wish; in either
instance, the Palestinians, and the world at large, cannot now expect
Israel not to use every means possible to protect its citizenry from
both immediate and future assaults by genocidal terrorists who wish to
murder Jews and destroy the Jewish state. No nation is required to enter
a suicide pact with its enemies, and no nation can be expected to wait
until enemy rockets successfully reach an apartment building or school,
forcing Israel to play, in the words of Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, “Russian roulette with its children.”Richard L. Cravatts PhD, Professor of Practice at Simmons College, is the author of
"Genocidal Liberalism: The University’s Jihad Against Israel & Jews"
(a David Horowitz Freedom Center publication) and President of Scholars
for Peace in the Middle East.Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/richard-l-cravatts/israels-morally-impossible-self-defense/ Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

by Tarek FatahWhichever side of the Arab-Israeli conflict one stands on, you cannot
deny the courage and perseverance of the Palestinian people.For generations, they have lived as stateless citizens, on one hand
standing up to Israel, which controls their day-to-day lives, and on the
other enduring their own leadership, which has betrayed them at every
opportunity.It is sad to see their century-long quest for statehood crippled by
the evil of Hamas, which has turned the legitimate Palestinian national
struggle into an Islamic Jihad against Jews.

Gaza could have become a showcase of Arab enlightenment and
enterprise after Israel withdrew from the territory in 2005. It could
have become a tourism haven and a crucible for learning and arts,
science and technology.

Instead, Gaza has become a one-party Islamic dictatorship under
Hamas, dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel.

Thousands of precious lives have been lost in this macabre display of hatred disguised as piety.

Its not just Israeli Jews that have been targeted for death.
Palestinians opposed to Hamas have been massacred to consolidate its
power.

On Nov. 12, 2007 Hamas gunmen fired on a rally organized by
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party inside a Gaza stadium,
at an event held to commemorate the late Yasser Arafat. Many were
killed. To the horror of the world, Hamas gunmen butchered Fatah
fighters, throwing wounded men from the roof of a 15-storey building to
their deaths.

In the current clash between Israel and Hamas, another ceasefire will
soon come into effect. The Americans and the United Nations will pour
in millions of dollars to re-build bombed out infrastructure.

But who will tell the Palestinians to get off the path of
self-destruction? Who will convince the Palestinian Islamists to stop
dreaming of destroying Israel and start building the future of their own
people?

Let me give it a try.

Palestinians must reflect on why, after struggling for 100 years,
their dream of statehood remains unfulfilled? They need to ask
themselves why tiny countries under occupation by larger foes have
become independent nations, while Palestinian statehood remains out of
reach.

Let us look at four examples.

East Timor: For 400 years it was colonized by Portugal and in 1975
occupied by Indonesia. The one million, mostly Catholic, Timorese fought
a long, bitter guerrilla war under Fretilin (Revolutionary Front of
Independent East Timor) for freedom from the huge country of Islamic
Indonesia, with a 300 million population. In 2002, East Timor won
independence as the last Indonesian soldier left.

Eritrea: Located in the Horn of Africa, Eritrea was annexed by its
southern and larger neighbour, Ethiopia, in 1962. This triggered a
30-year guerrilla war that involved hijackings and assassinations,
scarring an entire generation. However, in 1991 after a UN-supervised
referendum, Eritrea gained its independence.

Then there were the independence struggles of two Islamic countries
that fought for and found statehood—Bangladesh in 1971 and Kosovo in
2008.

In all four cases, these national liberation movements wanted their
own freedom, not the destruction of the countries that occupied their
land.

East Timor didn't want to destroy Indonesia. Kosovo had no interest in wiping Serbia off the map.

When Palestinians stop chanting for the death of Jews and Israel, and
start working to secure their own state, they will achieve it.

Palestinians have demonstrated courage and perseverance. What they need now, is wisdom.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Israel
must decide whether it is willing to tolerate a chronic Hamas threat or
risk a long, difficult operation to get rid of it.

As
Operation Protective Edge enters its third week, the real question has
yet to be answered, and will have to be addressed in the next few days:
Should Israel halt the operation at this time, or expand the ground
operation to take over Gaza?

Hamas
began the current round of violence by firing hundreds of rockets at
Israel, expanding the range of fire, introducing terrorists and aerial
drones and attempting to launch multiple tunnel attacks. It may have
succeeded in seeing most Israelis run for cover, but other than that,
Hamas has little to show for its efforts: three civilians were killed by
rocket fire, 30 Israeli soldiers were killed in clashes with terrorists
with a few dozen wounded, and the economic damage Israel has suffered
is minor compared to its gross national product – regardless of the
moral and financial blow made by foreign airlines temporarily suspending
flights to Israel.

The
feeling that Israel is not in control of the situation, but rather is
being dragged along, is perhaps the most difficult aspect of the past
few weeks. It is hard to stomach the fact that a terror organization,
which is one of Israel’s weakest remaining enemies in terms of
firepower, has been able to challenge the strongest nation in the Middle
East for days and is showing no signs of fatigue. Many in the region
view that as a Hamas success.

On
the other hand, Israel has mounted a forceful response. Using precision
weapons, the Israeli Air Force has dropped thousands of tons of
explosives on Gaza Strip, limiting its operations due to its desire to
avoid civilian casualties as much as possible.

The
question of how to address the terror tunnels has been at the forefront
of the ground incursion since its very beginning. Military and
political decision-makers have been aware of the complexity of the
threat and the difficulties of dealing with it.

As
the aerial operation continued and Hamas rejected the cease-fire
proposals Israel had agreed to time and again, the opportunity for a
difficult but necessary ground operation presented itself — especially
given the international legitimacy lent to Israel’s actions. The
potential IDF casualties, and projected Palestinian death toll, which is
higher since Hamas was preventing Palestinian civilians from leaving
areas where tunnels has been dug, were also considered.

The
IDF ground operation, which is very limited geographically, is geared
toward one objective: locating and destroying tunnels leading from Gaza
Strip to Israel. Though limited in scope, this mission is anything but
simple, as it requires seizing control of the open area between the
Palestinian side of the border and the nearby urban areas, maintaining
control of the area where tunnel entryways have been found, and engaging
in urban warfare against a well-prepared, well-entrenched enemy.

The
IDF is meeting its operational goals despite suffering losses. The
military has been able to locate dozens of tunnels, it is exercising due
caution while searching for additional tunnels, and destroying those
already seized. Using the proper procedures to prevent terrorists from
infiltrating the border, and assisted by Iron Dome on the home front,
the IDF has been able to prevent Hamas and its allies from marking any
real achievements. Hamas’ impotence is doubly evident against the
backdrop of the unprecedented destruction of its infrastructure in Gaza
Strip and its international isolation.

Still,
Hamas has not been brought to its knees and its operatives keep
launching missiles into Israel. It has been able to get foreign carriers
to cancel flights to and from Ben-Gurion International Airport, its
operatives are tenaciously fighting to preserve the tunnels that have
yet to be seized by the IDF, and Hamas has been able to kill and wound
Israeli soldiers.

Diplomatic clock ticking

The
Gaza Strip has always been a hotbed for terrorist cells, but between
1967, when Israel seized it in the Six-Day War, and the 1993 Oslo
Accords, they had never fired at Israel.

The
buildup of firepower in Gaza started after the implementation of the
Oslo Accords (1995), when the IDF left the urban areas where most
Palestinians resided. Five years later, the Qassam fire on southern
Israel began. A decade later, in a reckless move of security, Israel
disengaged from Gaza (2005) and allowed it to connect with Sinai, which
was a terrorist hotbed even then.

Hamas
wasted no time overrunning Gaza, and even though the strip is home to
several terrorist groups, including the Iran-backed Islamic Jihad, none
of them have contested Hamas’ rule.

Massive
amounts of weapons, of every type have been funneled into Gaza in a
process abetted by Iran and Hezbollah. This process was accelerated
further after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in Libya, which
has turned the latter into a key source of advanced weapons for
terrorists.

The
loss of control over the crossings between Sinai and Gaza Strip has
brought weapons experts and technology into Gaza, which has been
compounded by the smuggling of weapon-manufacturing machinery and
critical materials. As a result, Gaza terrorists now possess independent
production capabilities for long-range rockets and other weapons, such
as drones.

Israel
is now facing fierce fighting. Through the years, Hamas has crafted a
sophisticated system that allows it to fire rockets for a prolonged
period of time, alongside a labyrinth of tunnels that afford them a
considerable advantage over any invader.

After
two weeks of fighting, world leaders understand Israel’s position and
are willing to endure the protests by leftists and pro-Palestinian
groups, but the diplomatic clock has begun ticking and a decision on the
next step has to be made — especially if Hamas continues to reject the
Egyptian cease-fire proposal.

Now
is the time to ask the real and only important question: Should Israel
view the Hamas threat as one does a chronic disease, which has
unpleasant yet tolerable daily effects and which requires a difficult
treatment every few years; or should Israel risk a complex, difficult
and risky operation that, even if it could alleviate many of the
symptoms completely, would require lengthy aftercare?

It
is possible to create a reality in which there is no rocket fire from
Gaza Strip, just as there is no rocket fire from Judea and Samaria.
This, however, requires a complex ground maneuver to seize the strip,
which would undoubtedly result in many Israeli casualties. A prelude to
this scenario is evident by the high number of IDF casualties sustained
so far in the ground operation.

Such
a maneuver is also likely to meet hostile international public opinion,
including from world leaders that have so far supported Israel’s moves.
Of course, simply conquering Gaza Strip would not be enough and the IDF
and Shin Bet security agency would have to reconstitute the
intelligence infrastructure that was lost after Oslo and the
disengagement.

The
IDF would also have to deploy massive forces on the ground to
demilitarize Gaza, arrest Hamas operatives or kill those who refuse to
surrender, and essentially reinstate Israel’s full military control of
Gaza Strip, just as it was prior to the IDF’s retreat from the strip’s
urban areas in 1995.

This
kind of control means one thing: the military will deploy its forces
across Gaza according to its own consideration — there is no need to be
everywhere at all times — and it will operate freely across Gaza as the
need arises.

The Vacuum Dilemma

The
process of demilitarizing Gaza and arresting Hamas operatives could
take between six months and a year, and it is likely to see fierce
fighting and many casualties. Hamas will eventually lose its ability to
challenge the IDF, which would assume control on the ground, as it has
in Judea and Samaria.

IDF
intelligence would be used to facilitate further arrests and
preventative actions. As long as Israeli troops are on the ground, the
level of difficulty and risk would plummet and the majority of terrorist
capabilities would be thwarted. Even if terror groups would mark the
occasional success, it would be temporary and containable. Only once all
that is done, will there be no more rocket fire from Gaza at Israel.

The
military dilemma, which is complex, may be compounded by a political
dilemma, as no one knows who would be willing to assume responsibility
for the Gaza Strip once the IDF completes is mission. The IDF would be
unable to leave Gaza, as that may prompt the rise of new and even more
radical elements than Hamas. In the current climate in the Middle East,
each vacuum is immediately filled with radical Islamist elements, which
naturally Israel cannot allow.

This
is why Israel might have to reinstate the pre-Oslo “civil
administration,” overseeing Gaza and its 1.7 million residents. It is an
administrative, economic and diplomatic burden, which — notwithstanding
the differences stemming from the passage of time — we successfully
carried for 28 years, between 1967 and 1995.

It
is a difficult but feasible move that will have an unequivocal result.
It will halt the Gaza rocket fire and it will put an end to the
terrorist tunnels that threatens Israelis on Israeli soil.

A
military operation of this scope will see a heavy civilian death toll
in the Gaza Strip. Hamas has been using Palestinian civilians as human
shields, as their lives are worthless to its leaders. In the long run,
taking control of Gaza would save many Palestinian lives, because IDF
“maintenance” on the ground would claim fewer lives than the various
military campaigns over the years.

This
change might make things easier for Israel, despite the scathing
international criticism during the incursion and demilitarization
process. After all, Israel has been unable to rid itself from
“occupation” accusations despite its complete disengagement from Gaza,
and the international community has censured it over the civilian death
toll in the various military operations mandated by the current
situation.

Another
option is a return to the cease-fire deal reached in the 2012 Operation
Pillar of Defense and the understandings of the 2008 Operation Cast
Lead, meaning to pursue a mediated cease-fire as soon as the tunnels are
destroyed.

To
reach a cease-fire deal, Israel will have to make concessions,
especially economic ones, in negotiations that should be held parallel
to the continued efforts to target Hamas infrastructure from the air, as
well as ongoing rocket fire at Israel.

Such
a cease-fire would see Hamas reestablish its undisputed rule in Gaza
Strip and allow it to reconstitute its military capabilities ahead of a
future conflict, which will take place when it feels that it has become
powerful enough. Hamas may not find it as easy as it once did to rebuild
its severely-damaged infrastructure and restore its capabilities. Abdel
Fattah el-Sissi’s regime in Egypt will not make it easy for Hamas, but
this process will only see a change of pace.

Israel
will undoubtedly use this time to improve its own capabilities, just as
the Iron Dome had undergone updates ahead of Operation Protective Edge;
but we have to realize that Hamas will be the one to decide when both
parties’ capabilities will be put to the test.

I
believe that given the extent of the damage Hamas has sustained, along
with the Egypt-imposed constraints and international isolation, it would
have to undergo a long and difficult rehabilitation process, and
therefore a cease-fire — even without an IDF operation that would extend
beyond the destruction of the tunnels —could last longer. This lull
would also be temporary and we are likely to see the occasional rogue
operative fire rockets at communities in the Gaza vicinity; but it is
clear that Israel would not violate a cease-fire agreement “over a few
rockets.” It has not done so in the past, nor will it do so in the
future.

Unfortunately,
those are the only two realistic options: a lengthy, difficult
operation to end the rocket fire on Israel, or a cease-fire that would
lead to another round of violence in the future. Other options, ranging
from “we should pummel them to the ground, cut off their water and power
and starve them out” to “we should negotiate, offer them financial aid
and bolster Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas’ position,”
have no practical standing and are not grounded in the realities Israel
must face with regards to itself (yes, morals and ethics) and with
regards to the world.

These
suggestions will not achieve anything; or they will lead us back to the
aforementioned problem. Financial aid to the Palestinians is important,
Hamas has put it as a precondition to a cease-fire and Israel should
facilitate it, but it will not change Hamas’ animosity.

The
reader might wonder what my own opinion is, but my personal opinion is
not important. The facts and their correct analysis are far more
important, as they allow each reader to come to his own conclusions as
to the complexity of the problem and the difficulties pertaining to a
future decision.

Israel’s
decision-makers deserve every praise for the prudence of their actions
so far, and we hope for the same in the future. But we should be aware
of the fact that the problems they face have no easy solution.
Sometimes, simply giving an issue further consideration before making a
careful decision is commendable— and this case deserves even more than a
second thought.

A version of this article was published today in Israel Hayom

BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family

Major
General (res.) Yaacov Amidror is the Anne and Greg Rosshandler Senior
Fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. Until the end of
2013, he served as National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister of
Israel and chairman of the National Security Council. Previously, he was
commander of the IDF Military Colleges, military secretary to the
Minister of Defense, and director of the Intelligence Analysis Division
in IDF Military Intelligence.

Source: http://besacenter.org/uncategorized/war-hamas-decision-time-approaching/Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Ceremony overshadowed by Gaza operation; both President Peres and incoming President Rivlin address Israeli war effort.

(L to R) Rivlin, Edelstein, and Peres at the Knesset

In a gala ceremony, but a subdued one, Reuven Rivlin was sworn
in Thursday evening as the tenth President of Israel. The ceremony was
held in the shadow of the heavy fighting still going on in Gaza, as IDF
troops continued to pummel away at Hamas terrorists and destroy their
rocket and tunnel infrastructure.

As a result of the war, a reception that was to be held after the
ceremony was canceled. The decision to cancel was made by Rivlin and
Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein.

Edelstein, speaking first, opened his comments with a prayer for the
safety of IDF soldiers. A large portion of his speech was dedicated to
discussing the war effort. “We entered this just campaign
in order to bring about an end to the ongoing damage our citizens
suffer. We embrace our soldiers, as we would members of our own family,”
Edelstein said.

Turning to outgoing President Shimon Peres, Edelstein said that “for
nearly 60 years you have been a part of the Israeli political system,
here in the Knesset. You made your views well know to all, and set an
agenda. Once you became president, you placed politics aside and became
as one of the people, of all the people. You were the man of hope, the
man of the future.” To the incoming president, Edelstein said that “this
war shall pass, and on your shoulders will be the most difficult burden
– to unite the people and heal the tears in Israeli society. I know you
are prepared for this battle, which will come the day after the Gaza
battle ends.”

Peres also dedicated a good portion of his speech to Operation Protective Edge. “Hamas fires at us but
it cannot answer two simple questions: Why is shooting at us? There is
no more occupation of Gaza. What does it seek to achieve? We showed them
they could achieve things without making war on us, yet they chose to
do so. We have suffered 68 years of terror, but they have brought much
destruction to their nation. They have never beaten us, and only caused
suffering for their citizens and destruction for Gaza. Hamas has no answers and learns no lessons.”

Rivlin began his speech with the recitation of the “Shehechiyanu”
blessing, recited upon the embarking upon of an important new project.
“With prayer, dear, and modesty I present myself to fulfill your will and to act in your name.”

The Gaza war was also a main subject of Rivlin's speech. Rivlin said
Israel would not be bowed by the ongoing violence in Gaza. "We are
gathered here today not only because the law requires it, but also with a
very clear message to our enemies: you have not overcome us and you
will not do so," he said.

“The Hamas terrorists may dig their tunnels, shoot from within
schools, use civilians as human shields, but this terrorism will not
drive us back, will not weaken our spirit. We are not fighting against
the Palestinian people, and we are not at war with Islam -- we are
fighting terrorism," he said.

And in a direct address to Peres, he said: "Seven years ago, you
stood on this platform and told us that you never dreamed of being
president. You said your dream as a boy was to be a shepherd or a poet
of the stars.

“Your dream, Mr President, came true. You were for us a shepherd of hope and a poet of vision."

Peres will on Friday leave his official residence in Jerusalem and
move into a new apartment in Tel Aviv, close to the Peres Center for
Peace in Jaffa, Haaretz reported.

Rivlin will officially begin his term in office on Monday, drawing a
line under what many Israelis have seen as a golden age of the
presidency. A lawyer by profession, Rivlin has won widespread support
from across the political spectrum for his determined defense of
democracy and civil rights.

Rivlin has a tough act to follow, with Peres's charisma and global standing enabling
him to transcend the largely ceremonial position of the presidency and
use it to promote his personal views on the peace process - often
provoking friction with elected officials who resented what they saw as
an interference which undermined Israeli democracy.Arutz Sheva Staff and AFPSource: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/183321#.U9FwEmMYjLM Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh with the emir of Qatar in Gaza, October 2012

The conflict between Hamas-controlled Gaza and Israel became
inevitable after a series of decisions and actions made clear that the
movement was not interested in defusing tensions and returning to the
ceasefire that had shakily pertained since 2012.

These actions included the attempt to infiltrate a terrorist team
into Zikim on July 8, the continued firing of rockets after the
rejection of the Egyptian ceasefire proposal, the failure to respect the
humanitarian cease-fire initiated by the UN and the attempted attack
though a tunnel on July 14.

It is doubtful that Hamas planned the entire campaign from the start.
The trigger to the crisis – the kidnap and murder of three Israeli
teenagers, may well have been carried out by elements not taking orders
from the movement's official leadership.

But as the momentum of events gathered pace, it is clear that Hamas
at a certain point reached a decision to escalate, to initiate a head on
collision with Israel.

What were the tactical and strategic considerations underlying this
decision? Regarding immediate and tactical considerations – Hamas is not
an isolated player. It is part of a Muslim Brotherhood regional
alliance bankrolled by the Emirate of Qatar.

The last year has not been good for this alliance. In 2011-12, they
were riding high. They had come to power in Egypt and in Tunisia and
seemed fairly placed to triumph in Syria too. Hamas elected to back what
looked like an emergent Muslim Brotherhood power bloc – and drew away
from its alliance with Iran.

Not much is left of all that. Egypt and Tunisia are gone. In Syria,
only the regime, Islamic State and the Kurds remain as serious players.
The Muslim Brotherhood's moment in the sun was exceedingly brief.

This left their Palestinian iteration, Hamas, looking somewhat beached in 2014. The Iranian funding declined.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi decimated the tunnel system
through which the rulers of Gaza brought in goods and money. Fuel
shortages and power outages became part of daily life. There was no
money to pay state employees.

The Hamas decision to relaunch its military campaign, its refusal to
accept Israel's offer of "calm for calm," and its rejection of an
Egyptian cease-fire proposal that Israel accepted represent an attempt
to bring about a "reset" in the position of Hamas and its backers in the
region.

In precisely the same way that Iran created and developed Hezbollah
in order to use the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a generator of
legitimacy among the Arabs for the Shia Persians, so Hamas and the
Muslim Brotherhood want a bloody war in Gaza, so as to reinsert
themselves into popular legitimacy, relevance and diplomatic influence
in the Arab world.

Hamas, previously isolated and increasingly irrelevant, is starring
in a drama of its own making. Its spokesmen are crying crocodile tears
for the deaths of civilians that they knew were inevitable.

Hamas banners are being carried once more by baying crowds in European cities.

Qatar, meanwhile, the main bankroller of Hamas and the Muslim
Brotherhood, is inserting itself back into regional diplomacy, following
Hamas's flat rejection of Egyptian mediation.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas were
in Doha to hear Hamas's demands for a cease-fire. The emir of Qatar,
Sheikh Hamad al-Thani is acting as the "channel of communication" for
Hamas.

Yet for all this, the success has been only partial. The rival,
anti-Muslim Brotherhood alliance of Sisi's Egypt and Saudi Arabia is
operating in more or less direct opposition, seeking to prevent any
tangible gains for Hamas from its campaign, and to force it back to
acceptance of the status quo ante bellum.

Given the suffering of Gazans, any such acceptance would constitute a
huge blow to Hamas. So Cairo is effectively allied with Israel and
against Qatar/ Hamas/MB in this conflict. The obvious explanation for
this is Cairo's ongoing war against the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

The "Arab street" has failed to rally to the Qatar/Hamas banner.
There are larger demonstrations in European cities for Hamas than in any
Arab capital.

The Arab world is engulfed by issues of far greater historic
magnitude than the question of Gaza. And in any case, from the regional
perspective this conflict appears as an Israel vs Hamas war, not an all
out clash between Israelis and Palestinians.

Regarding strategic considerations – Hamas remains committed to the muqawama
("resistance") doctrine, according to which it is engaged, together
with other Islamist political-military organizations in a long war that
will end in Israel's destruction.

According to this view, most famously articulated by Hassan
Nasrallah, Hezbollah's general-secretary, Israel is physically and
technologically strong, but suffers from a spiritual and ideological
weakness.

This weakness is variously attributed either to the supposedly
inherent cowardly and craven nature of Jews, or to the "artificiality"
of the Jewish state and identity, or to a not quite logically tenable
mixture of the two.

This weakness, the muqawama doctrine considers, can be brought
out through a long war of attrition, in which the inability of the Jews
to absorb casualties, and their gradual recognition of the
impossibility of normal life in their state will result in its slow and
steady erosion, and eventual demise.

From the point of view of this doctrine, the Hamas decision to
escalate makes sense – even if to an outsider the idea of a tiny
statelet willingly seeking conflict with a vastly more powerful neighbor
seems counter-intuitive. The civilians whom Hamas leaders knew would
die in any conceivable Israeli response were presumably factored in as
collateral damage. From a certain point of view, they even represented
an asset, since their example could be held out as proof of the
supposedly greater willingness of the Arab/Muslim side for
self-sacrifice, when compared with the Israeli/Jewish enemy.

So the war derives from the desire of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood
and Qatar to return to relevance and centrality in the region, and from
the persistent misreading of the nature of Israel and the true balance
of forces between the Jewish state and its enemies, by the Islamist
rulers of Gaza.

Jonathan Spyer is a senior research fellow at the Global Research
in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and a fellow at the Middle East
Forum.